Uncharted: The Frustrated Man
by Glockenspiel
Summary: Nate is frustrated by the lack of bedroom activities in his marriage. Elena is annoyed that Nate hasn't learnt what can and can't go into the dryer. Sully tries to be helpful and fails. Chloe gets in the way. Throw in a crazed terrorist, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and a four-poster bed and we may just have another adventure on our hands! Sequal to Family Man. Part 3 is up.
1. Chapter 1

**This is a short story set after the epilogue of Uncharted: The Family Man.**

**I know I'm a terrible updater so I've written most of this before even thinking about uploading it. There are only going to be four or five chapters. I'm currently writing the fourth.  
**

**If you skim read the last chapter and epilogue of 'The Family Man' I think you'd know enough to understand some of the backstory and jokes although it's not a necessity. This story mentions and features a few of the made-up characters from 'The Family Man' but they aren't integral to the plot. Except for Ted, who in the other story, ended up with Chloe. **

**Basically, Nate and Elena have a son and then after some time get married. Chloe met a guy called Ted and after a few problems manage to get together.  
**

**In the last story, I got carried away with all the other characters but this time I've tried to keep the focus on Nate and Elena.**

**Whenever I try to write something heart-achingly sweet it always turns out tooth-achingly sweet and the incidence of cavities rises ten-fold so I've tried to keep this to a minimum. **

**I'd like to thank I.B.A.W.I, a reviewer of the previous story, who suggested the name Alex for Nate and Elena's son. I couldn't think of anything else that didn't sound ridiculous lol**

**There is some swearing in the later chapters**

**Finally, Uncharted isn't mine. **

**There's a bit of going backwards and forwards in time...**

* * *

Extra Chapter

Part 1

Nathan Drake revelled in his moment of bliss. For a few brief moments, nothing in the world could quite touch him. He could do anything he wanted.

The sheets were cool against heated skin.

Noticing the rather slack features upon her husband's face, Elena Drake realised it was time to strike.

Reclining in the most relaxed manner, Nate's already soaring spirits were raised even further when he felt Elena's fingers brush his chest. With a lazy movement he sneaked an arm around her waist and pulled her closer.

'Nate?' she breathed against his neck.

'Hmmm?' Nate replied, pretty confident as to where this conversation was going to go.

'The house gutters are clogged up with leaves, do you think you could clean them?'

Nate frowned slightly, this was pretty grim for dirty talk, and it took a few seconds for him to realise that Elena meant the literal gutters of the house which they owned. That wasn't exactly what he had in mind but he was in an agreeable mood.

Elena's practised shift of hips only sealed the deal.

'Yeah, sure,' Nate mumbled, 'I'll do it.'

Elena pressed her lips to his with only the slightest mote of a guilty conscience. Blatant manipulation wasn't her favourite thing in the world but it did get things done.

Later that afternoon, Nate cleared the gutters of rotten sodden leaves happily.

A couple of weeks later, Nate stared at the once again filthy gutters and wondered how he'd even got up the ladder. He hated cleaning the gutters. Why was he doing this?

A few months later, Nate didn't even get as far as getting the ladder out.

Elena noticed.

…

_Months later_

Elena bent down by the dryer and began to unload it. Nate slouched against an old fridge.

'We should go on holiday. Just the two of us,' Nate said.

Elena grunted with the effort of hauling laundry, 'What about Alex?'

'We can leave him with your parents. Your mother is always saying how she never gets a chance to see him,' Nate quickly replied when Elena mentioned their son.

Poking her head inside the dryer's drum, Elena raised an eyebrow. That speedy reply had clearly been thought about. Nate must really want this holiday. To be honest, Elena wouldn't have minded either and she was just about to say so when she spied something lurking in the dryer.

She sighed.

'What is this?' Elena asked Nate, having extracted the tangled fabric.

Nate squinted at it, grinned nervously, 'Uh, a bra?'

Elena gave him a flat look.

'Ok, so not a bra. Umm, a sock?'

'It is a bra, but that isn't why I'm glaring at you, there is something wrong with the bra,' Elena replied exasperated.

Nate gave Elena a nonplussed look.

'You put it in the dryer! It's ruined now. I tell you every time not to put bras in the dryer but do you listen? No! It's a wonder I have any left,' Elena explained irritably.

Nate had a vague recollection of being told about loading the dryer but that was about it.

'Sorry. I'll remember next time.'

Elena shook her head, 'You said that the last ten times.'

'Uh, if there is such a shortage, I could be a bra,' Nate said in an offhand way.

Elena gave him a look as if she had misheard, 'Sorry, what was that?'

'I could be the bra for a while. I'll just stand behind you and hold them while you go about your business,' Nate said, dead serious.

Elena wasn't sure if she was more surprised about the suggestion or the fact that it had been delivered in that tone of voice that meant Nate had been thinking about this for a while.

'Just, no,' she said after a while.

'Why not?' Nate asked.

'One: it's not practical and, two: you have cold hands,' Elena replied, 'and three: just…no.'

…

Ted burst out laughing.

Nate looked at him, 'What's so funny.'

'A bra? Really?' Ted wiped a tear from his eye but was still bent double in laughter.

'Look, I haven't had sex in months. I'm dyin' here,' Nate said defensively. Although, now that he had retold the story, it did feel a bit silly. Only a bit. It had been a desperate moment.

'People don't die from that,' Ted assured him.

'Maybe not but I still feel crap,' Nate muttered, crossing his arms.

'I think the word you're looking for is frustrated,' Ted replied.

Sunlight filtered through the trees and a light breeze shifted leafy shadows.

'Well, you don't have to worry about that,' Nate grunted.

Ted gave him a sidelong look, 'Have you met Chloe? She's like a wild animal; if you back her up in a corner she goes nuts. If I had suggested the bra thing she'd probably shoot me in the knee or something.'

'But you're not in a…dry patch right now.' Nate grumbled.

'I wouldn't say that,' Ted sighed, 'we were in the mall the other day and a little kid asked me for the time and Chloe kicked me. Right there, in the middle of the mall, as if that was the normal thing to do.'

'Oh, she still does that?'

Ted gritted his teeth. 'What? Do something weird whenever we encounter children because she thinks I'm trying to drop 'let's-have-babies-immediately' hints everywhere? Yeah, she still does that and then avoids me like I'm the damned plague.'

'I think this is probably the most pathetic, unmanly thing I have ever witnessed. Two guys trying to beat each other in a competition about getting owned by their women,' a rusty chuckle from behind a trashcan not too far away said.

Nate and Ted towards the voice.

'Did we just get heckled by a trashcan?' Ted asked.

'I think so, but it did sound an awful lot like Sully,' Nate said.

'It is Sully,' the man himself said, emerging from his sitting position, 'I called Elena a while ago and she said you might be at the park but your conversation sounded real interesting so I thought I'd just sit here and listen. And can I just say: a bra? Really?'

Nate scowled, 'Hey, I needed to try something.'

'Amateurs, been there done that, I know that don't work,' Sully said wisely.

Nate shook his head in disbelief.

…

'Nate refused to clean my gutters,' Elena said flatly.

There was silence.

'That's disgusting,' Chloe Frazier replied after a while.

Elena paused as she realised how this might have sounded to someone like Chloe, 'Uh, I didn't phrase that right…'

'Damn straight,' Chloe replied, enjoying her friend's uncomfortable moment.

'Let me start over,' Elena said and took a deep breath.

After a several minutes at Chloe's least favourite place - the laundrette of repressed marital emotions - where she had just caught several un-loadings of the I-used-sex-as-a-tool-to-manipulate-my-husband-and-now-it-isn't-working washer – Chloe sighed heavily.

'That's pretty cold,' she said leaning back in the kitchen chair.

Elena cradled her head in her hands, 'I know and I felt bad, trust me, but he just didn't do any house work.'

'And now you're telling me it stopped working?' Chloe commented, summing up her conversation with Elena so far.

'Yeah. Plus, I've been so busy with work and looking after Alex that we just haven't had a single moment to ourselves,' Elena explained.

Chloe sipped at her coffee and cast a glance around Elena's kitchen. She had never seen herself as a woman of leisure who had coffee mornings but here she was, a severely undertrained agony aunt who cared little for domestic problems and an even less desire to learn more about them, especially those concerning married life. A tickly thought at the back of her mind said that she was well on her way there already. Chloe beat it away with a mental broom and turned her mind to the problem at hand.

'Why don't you guys just dump the baby and take a trip somewhere and, uh, I don't know, talk about your feelings or something,' Chloe suggested.

Elena raised an eyebrow, ''Talk about your feelings'?'

Chloe sighed, 'Ok, yes, I meant 'hot monkey sex' but the kid is right here, I didn't want to corrupt his mind.'

Elena wrinkled her nose, 'Hot monkey sex? Is that even a thing? Anyway, Alex is barely a year old, I don't think he's taking anything we say on board.'

'If it isn't a thing, it definitely should be,' Chloe said, eyeing the baby with blatant suspicion and then quickly noticing Elena's stare muttered, 'Well if his first words are 'hot monkey sex' don't blame me.'

Elena grinned and waved one of the many noisy soft toys that littered the floor at the baby who gurgled.

'Aunty Chloe's crazy, isn't she? Yes she is. Crazy aunty Chloe, thinking that you understand us, hah. Oooga booga boo.'

Chloe disliked baby talk. It followed no grammatical rules and lacked real words. Surely if you wanted to teach someone to talk, you would use the Queen's bloody English?

As the baby happily laughed, Chloe did find herself thinking that his cheeks were very chubby. She wanted to pinch them. And then do it again.

Chloe was horrified at herself.

She didn't _like_ children. She didn't _want_ children. Didn't she?

'It's your body clock telling you to hurry up,' Elena said knowingly. Chloe snapped back to attention and scowled.

'Sorry? What was that?'

'Your body is telling you to have a baby,' Elena explained slowly.

'And how, pray tell, did you deduce that?' Chloe replied, irritated.

'You were eyeing Alex like you wanted to gobble him up.'

'Excuse me, I don't gobble,' Chloe said and then hastily, and not at all subtly, switched subjects, 'so anyways, why don't you take this trip? Married people do that all the time when their sex lives are stagnating.'

'Hmmm, Nate suggested the same thing a while ago. It sounds like a nice idea but I've got a lot of work to do at the office.'

'That sounds like a big fat excuse, if you want my opinion. You're trying to avoid spending time with him. What's up with that?' Chloe said.

Elena shrugged. Married, settled life was hard going, she mused. She had her job but what did Nate have? He must be bored out of his mind. Truth be told, she was a little tired of it all too.

An adventure. That's what she wanted. A threat to the world, lush jungles, frozen deserts, guns, explosions….

She was a mother though now. She was responsible for a life other than her own and she had tied Nate to her as well. Her main worry was that he resented her for this.

She felt a little guilty for even thinking these things. After the whole Phil escapade, she had never wanted to be involved with a mythical item and its ensuing adventure ever again but time had passed and domestic life was dull compared to what they could have been doing.

Elena was also partly worried about confronting Nate about his laziness and the questionable methods she had employed to get him to do chores.

Chloe sensed that she had struck a chord and felt that since they were friends, she was obliged to ask why.

'Are you alright?' she asked tentatively.

Elena stared at the kitchen counter, 'I'm a little bit worried to be honest.'

Chloe inwardly groaned. She knew what was coming next. More emotions.

'This life, it's hard,' Elena continued, 'I'm worried that Nate is getting frustrated by the boredom of home life. After the Phil thing, I forced him to stop all that adventure stuff –.'

'Nobody forced him,' Chloe cut in. 'He missed the birth of his son and both of you nearly died. Nate's not stupid, he knows what's more important. Since meeting you he has matured.'

Elena smiled briefly. She felt slightly bolstered by these few words.

'You're right but still, I do wonder. Also, I'm not sure about the mature part. The other day he suggested that he should start being a bra.'

Chloe frowned, 'That's just plain stupid. You guys really do need this holiday.'

Elena agreed, 'There's one problem, though. My parents have gone on a trip around Europe for two months. There's no one to look after Alex.'

'What about one of your sisters?' Chloe suggested quickly. If she didn't take control fast, things were going to go downhill very quickly for her.

'They're all going with my parents. I thought it was a bit much for Nate so I decided pretty early that I wasn't going to go with them,' Elena explained.

How convenient, Chloe thought darkly. The babysitter options were dwindling fast.

'Sully? Or what about the other two? Barry and Miguel,' she said.

'The last time they babysat Alex for an evening they burnt the kitchen down…with the washing machine. There's no telling what they might if we were going to go for longer,' Elena said.

'Oh, yeah, I had forgotten about that. Huh, there isn't anyone else?' Chloe asked with a sinking feeling.

'It's quite sad. I wish we had more friends who weren't crazy,' Elena said slowly with a glint in her eye.

There was an awkward lull in the conversation.

'Well, it's a good thing I don't know anything about children. Isn't it?' Chloe managed a weak chuckle at Elena's penetrating stare.

'You might enjoy it,' Elena said.

'What? No I won't. You're trying to get rid of it!' Chloe shot back with a touch of panic.

'But look at those cheeks. They're so chubby...,' Elena said with an evil grin.

Oh dear, Chloe thought, she just had to mention those cheeks.

…

A few days later, Ted was rather surprised to see Chloe staring at a baby on returning to their apartment from the grocery store.

'Am I dreaming?' he asked as he set down laden bags on the counter.

Chloe shot him a decidedly withering look, 'No, but don't let your imagination run wild or anything. This isn't some kind of weird flour baby exercise. We're just babysitting Alex while Elena and Nate go on holiday.'

'I don't remember being consulted about this,' Ted replied jokingly, picking up the baby and bouncing him gently.

'I tried to block it from my memory. Why are you throwing that baby up and down?'

'Kids love this stuff,' Ted replied knowledgably and then stopped when he caught sight of Chloe's expression. He'd done something wrong.

Chloe narrowed her eyes. Alex had enjoyed being thrown around and was laughing happily. She had tried that too, earlier, on recommendation from Elena, but had only been rewarded with crying and now here Ted was just oozing fatherly potential.

'Hey,' Ted said as he realised what was going on, 'I'm not dropping any 'let's have babies hints'. Ok? You agreed to look after Alex. Not me.'

'If asked, you would have said yes, though, right?' Chloe asked.

'Actually, I would have tried to get out of it because I knew you wouldn't want to.'

Chloe was quiet for a moment as her anger turned to shame. 'Ah, crud. Sometimes I wonder how you put up with me.'

'It's for the hot monkey sex, mostly,' Ted replied in an offhand way.

Chloe scowled.

…

'Are you sure he's going to be alright?'

'Elena, since Chloe and Ted aren't Miguel and Barry, I think Alex is going to be fine,' Nate assured.

'Hmm, I don't know. I've never left him for this long,' Elena said wistfully. Just thinking about leaving her son put her in an anxious mood. The last time she had left him alone for any significant amount of time, Alex had been kidnapped by a rotund villain called Phil. The trauma of that incident, even though it was a while ago, had left its indelible mark.

'It'll be good for them. Chloe especially,' Nate replied, sensing Elena's uneasiness.

The two were strolling towards the airport hangar where Nate had chartered a plane. The speed at which Nate had organised this trip after Elena had agreed worried her slightly. Since Sully had visited, Nate had been extremely persistent about going. There seemed to be some rush beyond what Nate had said to convince her that Elena didn't understand. It was unsettling, to say the least.

'You're right, I know. My main concern though, is if the house is going to still be standing when we get back,' Elena muttered.

Nate sighed and wished Elena would stop worrying. Everything was going to be fine. It had to. Although, considering who their house-sitters were, her qualms were fairly legitimate.

…

_A couple days ago_

The doorbell chirped.

Nate opened the door to reveal Miguel the pilot and Barry the British film director.

Gut instinct told him the shut the door immediately but his curious nature won out.

Not wanting to appear callously rude, he opened the front door wider and let his guests inside.

'So, what brings you guys here?' Nate asked.

'Ah, well, we heard you were going on a trip so we thought we'd offer our house-sitting services to you,' Barry began.

Nate wished he hadn't opened the door.

'Umm, don't you remember the last time we let you do something for us?' Nate said, wondering how they had even heard about his plans for a vacation.

'Which is why we're not offering to babysit,' Miguel piped up helpfully.

Nate wondered how he could break the negative answer to them without hurting feelings but before he could say anything, Sully ambled down the stairs.

'Hey, how'd you get in here?' Nate asked, confused.

'I needed a place to crash and you gave me a spare key,' Sully explained, helping himself to an apple from the fruit bowl that Nate didn't even realise he had.

'Yeah, but I thought you'd tell us if you were coming by,' Nate grumbled, 'What if me and Elena were doing… _something_?'

'Heh,' Sully chuckled, 'Good one, kid, you're married. That shit don't happen anymore.'

Nate didn't like how close that hit to the mark.

'It's also 'Elena and I',' Barry interjected for no good reason. Nate shot him a look.

'You might wanna take them up on that offer, y'know,' Sully said.

'Are you crazy?' Nate exclaimed.

Barry sniffed, offended.

'I got a call this morning, that stuff I was telling you about at the park. It's all set.' Sully explained. His choice of words was so vague that Barry and Miguel couldn't help but be instantly curious as to what was going on.

Nate went quiet.

Elena appeared from the hallway and took a sudden step back when she noticed her house was now full. She also noticed the uneasy look on Nate's face.

'I didn't realise you guys would be here,' Elena said guardedly and then remembering her manners, 'Do you guys want a drink or something?'

'I'd love a beer,' Sully asked.

'A glass of Ribena, if you have it,' Barry added.

'Flaming Sambuca,' Miguel finished the orders.

Elena stood there for a moment, stumped. They were joking, right? When they all stared at her expectantly, she realised they weren't and retreated to the kitchen. What the crap was Ribena?

Nate watched Elena leave, motioned for his guests to move into the living room and went to join his wife.

He found Elena peering into the fridge nervously.

Well it was now or never.

Nate took a deep breath, 'Uh, Elena, y'know that trip I was talking about…let's go…next week.'

A few moments passed before Nate caught onto the fact that Elena hadn't taken this news badly but just hadn't heard.

'Elena, the trip…the vacation I was talking about. Let's go. Next week,' Nate repeated, a little louder this time.

'Nate, do we have any Ribena or Smabuca?' Elena whispered.

'Look, I really have something important to say,' Nate grumbled, well on to his way to exasperation. 'But no, we don't have any Sambuca.'

'What about the Ribena?' she asked.

'Not a clue,' Nate replied, who'd never heard of the stuff.

'Well, I guess I'll just give them all a beer,' Elena conceded.

She was just about to reach into the fridge when Nate forcefully closed the door with a palm. The bottles inside rattled.

'Nate, what the heck?' she turned angrily to her husband who was wearing an unusually serious expression.

'Look, forget the drinks. Listen to me. We're going on holiday. Next week. You and me,' Nate said shortly.

Elena stared at him mouth open wide.

'We're gonna what?' she managed to splutter.

'Holiday. You. Me. Next week.'

'But what about work? I need to book my vacation in advance, y'know. What about Alex? I don't know for sure if Chloe will look after him. I want to go on holiday too but shouldn't we sort things out properly?' Elena hurriedly put in. Where was this coming from all of a sudden?

Nate wondered how he could persuade Elena when she was making sensible remarks such as these. It didn't really make any sense to rush but he decided to go with the truth.

The truth always worked. Didn't it?

Nate put his hands on Elena's arms and took a deep breath. It was gestures such as these that really put Elena on edge. It meant Nate was being serious which didn't happen very often due to his incredibly laid-back character.

Elena quickly did a mental rewind of the last few weeks. Sure, things were a bit…strained…at the moment but she couldn't think of anything horrendously wrong with their marriage. Nothing that would bring on this kind of reaction from Nate, at any rate.

'Cooped up in this house with nothing to do, it's driving me insane,' Nate began to explain, 'I love Alex but I feel between looking after him and you being at work all the time…things have been…weird and don't let me get started on the sex. I don't even know what we're doing wrong here. I know I'm not good at this marriage stuff but I feel like I'm messing it up somehow. I think we need to get away from all this and clear our heads.'

Elena was silent. It was a strange moment to have those quiet itchy thoughts verbalised and confronted. There was something wrong with the two of them, wasn't there?

'I guess you're right. We do need to take a break,' she murmured, more to herself than Nate.

Nate was generally a simple man and what he thought was the truth working was more akin to emotional blackmail, but it did seem to be getting results. Nate silently congratulated himself on his maturity. 'Clear our heads' definitely didn't sound like a plea for a second honeymoon filled with copious amounts of mammal time, did it?

'Look, Barry and Miguel can look after the house and Chloe can take Alex. After all we've been through they owe me a few favours,' Nate ploughed on in the hopes of reducing any time Elena would have to doubt his intentions and plans. Since the half-truths he had told seemed to be working he felt no need to mention his other reasons for wanting this holiday.

'Barry and Miguel?' Elena said dazedly. She might have been a little taken aback by the outburst but it would take more than that for her to risk the safety of her granite kitchen worktops and solid oak cabinets. And maybe, just maybe, those kinds of thoughts had got them in this pickle in the first place.

'Yeah, it'll be fine; there aren't any dodgy appliances for them to set on fire. They'll just check in on it for a few days, y'know, nothing too taxing, no baby for them to look after or any of that.' Nate reassured.

Elena gave Nate an appraising look. He wanted this so bad and what he had said made sense.

There was also that slight feeling of excitement. A spontaneous holiday? That would be the closest thing to an adventure either of them had got to in a while.

'Ok. Let's do this.'

…

'Uh, Nate.'

'Yeah?'

'This doesn't look like Barbados.'

Nate poked his head out from the cockpit and took in a lungful of dry dusty air. No, this definitely wasn't Barbados. Elena stood on flattened dirt, hands on hips.

'What does it look like to you?' Nate asked.

'Iraq, Nate. This looks like Iraq.'

'Good,' Nate replied, ''Cause that's where we're supposed to be.'

Elena was not impressed.

* * *

**Thanks for reading…it's a pretty slow start I know…**

**My grammar is incredibly dodge…I can't really lecture about it lol...**

**I don't know if you guys ever did the flour baby thing…we had to do it at school…dress up a bag of flour with tights and then look after it for a week…we also had to keep a diary about it…I turned mine into pancakes…tasted damn good**

**I used to love Ribena as a kid…also Vimto…but I don't see that around much now…sad times…**

**The whole stagnating married life story line has been used many times before, I apologise…I could see it happening to these guys though.**

**In the years between writing this and the last story stuff has happened…I like the third Uncharted more than I did and I finally played Golden Abyss…I was surprised at how long it was I was prepared for it to be ten chapters long …turned out there were over thirty lol…**

**I think possibly the female character shoulda died – if you've played it you'll know where I mean - I think it would have made the story just a little bit more dramatic…I also thought Nate and her didn't quite click…she also greatly annoyed me with her no gun policy and then suddenly she was shooting people happily…rant aside I did find it fun if a little repetitive in the gameplay…the Sully and Nate banter was quite nice…a lot of 'that's what she said' jokes…**

**Uncharted 4 got announced…that's pretty cool…sounds like some guy is out for revenge…  
I also played Last of Us…was pretty darn good…although the ending did annoy me a bit lol  
**

**I also got older...standard**

**Thanks again**


	2. Chapter 2

**Hello again...**

**Stuff happens in this chapter…not all of it very believable…please just roll with it…**

**There is some swearing in this chapter**

**This is a pretty long chapter…sorry**

**In the last chapter, Nate and Elena ended up in Iraq because their marriage was stagnating…standard stuff**

* * *

Part 2

'Iraq?' Chloe blurted out, 'Why on earth would Nate take Elena there? It's not exactly a relaxing place.'

'One word answers all that,' Sully replied, 'adventure.'

'What's that supposed to mean?' Barry asked as he threw down some poker chips onto the table.

Ted looked at his cards, pondered and then folded.

'I figured that what was _really_ wrong with those two is that they weren't exactly getting enough…one on one time,' Sully explained.

'That much was obvious,' Chloe muttered, but still didn't understand why someone would choose Iraq to remedy this.

'So I thought I'd send them on a grand adventure with plenty of danger, guns, explosions and ancient stuff. Y'know, bring back that spark when they first met, or some sorta' crap like that.'

Alex gurgled in his high chair.

'Isn't that a little irresponsible? I mean what about the baby?' Barry said.

'I could hardly send them _with_ the baby,' Sully said.

'That wasn't my point,' Barry sighed and thought that giving Nate and Elena a normal holiday would have been just fine.

The group continued playing cards but Chloe wasn't really paying attention. Her thoughts were stewing. She got the feeling she was having a hard time accepting Elena's and Nate's holiday plans because she was jealous of them.

Chloe wanted the adventure. She wanted the guns. The explosions. The adrenaline. Knowing that whether you made it through the next minute or not relied purely on a shit load of luck and a handy niche in a cliff.

How long had it been? Too long. Way too long.

Chloe glanced at Ted who sat opposite her. His face wore a pensive expression. She wasn't sure if that was because of the hand he had just been dealt or the fact that Alex was growing on him and he was getting attached.

He _was _very good with children but Chloe couldn't help but feel pulled towards something else. An almost physical tug was telling her run. Run to the adventure.

It wasn't fair that Elena and Nate got to have all the fun. Right?

But she had promised. Promised not to leave the man sitting opposite her.

Crud.

There had to be a way round this.

…

If Ted was an aristocratic English gentleman he would have shot Chloe in the head by now because she looked so damn rabbity. Her eyes shifted to and fro and he could hear her boot tapping against the floor.

He knew what it was. If there was anything that could make Chloe so terribly obvious about her stress was when she was arguing with herself over something. It usually had something to do with him. It was that damned adventure talk.

Chloe was going to have a hard time letting this one go.

Ted sighed and prepared himself for the unexpected because that's usually what Chloe did in these moments.

'Ted, can I have a word in the kitchen?' Chloe asked.

Here we go, thought Ted as he scraped his chair back.

Chloe rounded on him as soon as they were both alone.

'Let's go on a trip,' she said suddenly.

Ted wanted to grin. He wondered whether he should let Chloe know she was being only a smidgen less transparent than the kitchen window she was standing in front of.

'Oh yes? What about Alex?' Ted asked.

'Umm…Sully can look after him. He is his godfather, after all,' Chloe said as if hit by sudden inspiration.

'Ok, but where are we going to go?'

'Uh, Australia?'

'Australia,' Ted replied with a deadpan expression.

'Yes, you've always wanted to go…y'know to see where I grew up and stuff,' Chloe said in an off-hand way.

While this was true, Ted wasn't convinced. He was going to agree though, he knew it, because more than anything else he wanted to prove to Chloe that he wasn't in any way trying to domesticate their situation or, ultimately, ban at all the adventurous lifestyle that they both enjoyed so much. Too often Chloe assumed he wanted them settle down, put down roots and turn into old gnarled trees together. This wasn't quite the case.

'Ok cool, let's go,' he said.

Needless to say Chloe thought she was being a diabolical mastermind.

…

'So we're looking for the Hanging Gardens of Babylon,' Elena said slowly, mentally counting to ten.

'Yep.'

'And you couldn't have told me this before?'

'I wanted it to be a surprise and I didn't think you'd want to come,' Nate said, it was his earnestness that saved him from the brunt of Elena's wrath.

'That's sweet of you Nate. Really. But you should have told me before I packed. I've got a book and a bikini. Iraq and bikinis don't mix.'

'Bikinis mix with everything,' Nate replied, ever the man.

Elena sighed, 'Ugh, but what about Alex? Adventures come with dangers, what if something happens to us?'

While she was greatly annoyed at the way in which Nate had convinced her she did feel slightly relieved that they weren't in such a bad place, domestically not geographically, as she had thought. The plane journey had been filled with anxious thoughts about what they were going to discuss.

'No one knows about the Gardens' location, we'll be fine,' Nate said as he grabbed their bags from the plane and trotted down the creaky steps that had been wheeled into place.

'I wasn't really worried about that. It's the more the fact that we're in Iraq….a war happened here. This place isn't safe at all.'

Nate took stock of his surroundings. He had landed in an abandoned airport that was little more than a glorified dirt strip and a corrugated iron hut. An Iraqi flag hung lifelessly from a rusty pole. A trusty Jeep was waiting for them at the hut.

'We'll be fine. Trust me. When was the last time we had a vacation, just the two of us?' Nate said heading towards the vehicle.

Elena thought it was sad that she had to pause to think about this.

'It was years ago, before Alex was born. We went to Kenya,' Elena replied after a while, resignedly trudging beside her husband.

'Oh yeah, I remember now,' Nate laughed, 'that was a good holiday.'

Elena turned to look at him, 'Wait, what? I couldn't sit for two days and the scratches on your back got infected by those flies that lay eggs in the skin.'

Nate grinned in remembrance, 'Yeah, like I said, a good holiday.'

Elena rolled her eyes with a mumbled 'Oh jeez.'

Nate shifted his grip on the luggage and draped his free arm over Elena's shoulders.

'Hey, I'm kidding, it was traumatic. Nobody should have flies coming outta' their skin.'

'Don't even, I remember when we went to the clinic, you grinned like an idiot when the doctor raised an eyebrow at those scratches.'

'You make it out like I was nothing but an immature college kid. If I remember correctly, you weren't so bothered about the whole sitting thing.'

Elena nudged Nate with an elbow, 'Shut it.'

'What? I'm not allowed to have a valid argument?'

'No, you're not. That's part of marriage. I'm right. Always.'

Nate frowned, 'I don't remember that part.'

'It's in the small print,' Elena replied.

'You're shitting me? Marriage has small print? You didn't tell me,' Nate grumbled.

'It's just after the bit about not having a sex life but before the mandatory number of in-law visits you can expect in a year,' Elena explained.

'That explains a lot,' Nate said and threw the bags into the back of the Jeep that they had reached.

Elena peered into the shabby iron structure. There wasn't a soul in sight.

'This place is deserted,' Nate said, noticing her look around, 'There isn't a populated village for miles and this isn't a militia hot spot. We can take the Jeep for most of the journey and then we'll have to hike a little.'

Elena walked over to the passenger side of the Jeep and brushed the dusty seat with a hand. There was something about the feeling of the worn fabric beneath her fingertips that made her think of memories from their adventuring days. This was soon followed by a familiar build-up of excitement. The unknown was upon them. Who knows what might happen from here on out? It could be, just as Nate had said, a simple journey with nothing to trouble them but…but knowing them it would probably turn out to be something more.

Elena wondered whether it was a bad thing that she did want this little journey not to go to plan and swung herself into the Jeep with a light mood.

Nate sat behind the steering wheel but didn't move to turn the ignition.

'Is something wrong?' Elena asked.

'I want you to know that what I said to get you here…I did mean it. You gotta tell me what I'm doing wrong. I'm not good at this domestic stuff.'

Elena smiled, 'You're not doing anything wrong. Seriously. All couples go through this.'

'Really? Jeez, I was worried. We used to be the fun people, when did we get so old?' Nate replied looking visibly relieved.

'We got married and had a kid,' Elena laughed but there was a guilty itch irritating a corner of her conscious. She was going to have to tell Nate at some point.

'I don't regret that, y'know. Never,' Nate said.

Elena wondered whether Nate knew how much those few words meant to her.

…

'Uh, Chloe?'

'Yeah?'

'This doesn't look like Australia.'

'What does it look like?'

'Iraq, Chloe. This looks like Iraq.'

'Good,' Chloe replied, ''Cause that's where we're supposed to be.'

Ted was not impressed.

…

'Nate?'

'Yup?'

'Where did you see us ending up after we first met?' Elena asked.

Nate was quiet for a moment, gathering his thoughts as he deftly steered the jeep over the rutted road.

He was about to answer in his usual wise-ass way but then, wisely, opted for the truth.

'I've never really felt a connection or anything like that about a country. I was born in the States, sure, but not a lot of good happened there,' Nate began and then added, 'till now, of course. I thought that we'd get rich off some adventure. I'd buy a bar on a beach on a tropical island and not really give a damn about anything. We'd go sailing and flying or whatever the hell else you wanted to do and then when all the fun was over we'd return home to our beautiful beach shack -.'

'Sorry, where?' Elena interrupted.

'Our shack. Y'know, one of those wooden ones, right on the waterline.'

'Does it have electricity? Or plumbing?' Elena asked, not even bothering to ask if it was protected by sufficient coastal defences.

Nate thought about this for a moment, 'I hadn't actually thought about that. If you want there to be electricity and all that, then it's there.'

Elena laughed. Trust Nate to have the unrealistic fantasy.

'There is a bed though, a really big one,' Nate thought it prudent to add.

Elena rolled her eyes, 'Of course there is.'

Nate was happy enough to see that Elena wasn't too mad about the whole Iraq thing.

'What about you? Where did you see us going?'

'You really wanna' ask a woman that?' Elena joked.

'Sure.'

'Well, as cheesy as it sounds, I think we're probably there,' Elena said twisting the wedding ring on her finger.

'What? Dog tired and sexually frustrated?' Nate wondered out loud.

Elena shoved him hard with a hand.

'No, idiot. Happily married, a kid. Pretty much the only thing that's missing is the dog,' she said.

'I'm not sure we could handle a dog,' Nate replied with a grin.

'I agree, we'll just leave it at kids,' Elena said.

There was a moment of silence.

'_Kids_? As in…more than one?' Nate managed to ask.

Elena gave him a look, 'I just meant human babies in general….no pets.'

'Oh, right.'

Elena wasn't sure if she was happy about the relief in Nate's voice.

More children. It wasn't something they had really discussed although there were some good reasons why. Elena's first pregnancy was unplanned and hadn't really gone very well. First there were medical complications and then, once the premature Alex had actually been born, he had been kidnapped. It was enough to put anyone off.

It wasn't something they liked to think about either. No control and too much chance. A minute shift in luck would've changed everything. They wouldn't be parents and that was a scary thought. Would they have had the courage to try again? Could they have even stayed with each other after the self-assigned blame and grief? Elena sometimes doubted it.

On a lighter note, there seemed to be a distinct lack of activity that would bring about more children anyway.

Elena sat on her mental fence and pushed the matter aside. That was a question for another day.

Nate sensed the shift in mood and while correctly guessing what it was about, he too, avoided mentioning anything. It was a muddled area for both of them. Something that they still couldn't talk about properly because it was all too easy to imagine what could've been.

'While we've gone all serious for a moment,' Elena began, 'There's something I have to tell you.'

Nate gave her a sideways look with a genuinely worried expression.

Elena sighed, it was time. She couldn't hide from this any longer. When she caught sight of Nate's wretched expression, the guilt built to an unmanageable level. She couldn't let Nate think that he was the sole reason their marriage had stagnated.

'Don't look at me like that,' Elena began, 'It's not that bad.'

Nate gave her an appraising look, 'Really? Because you sounded dead serious.'

'It's…It's to do with the lack of sex…in the marriage…,' Elena continued.

'Do I need to stop the car?' Nate asked. This was really the kind of conversation where he felt he needed to have full concentration.

'No, no…it'll make it easier for me to say,' Elena said. 'The reason we haven't had much time for this is because….'

Nate was suitably worried. His mind pin wheeled with what Elena was about to say. The reason they weren't having sex anymore? Wasn't it because they didn't have enough time? Well, that being said, they could have made the effort before…

Was Elena going to say that she wasn't attracted to him anymore? Was he getting old and out of shape? Was he losing his hair? Did Elena really hate bald men? Crap, he was getting unattractive in his old age! When had he become such an old man? And where had this sudden compulsion to buy a leather jacket and a Ferrari come from? Mid-life crisis? Wait, maybe Elena doesn't even like men anymore…craaaaaaaaap…he'd been such a bad husband she's actually been turned to women! Nate's man brain actually slowed down here to appreciate the thought and then Elena finished the sentence.

'I may have been using a sex-for-chores scheme, and then withheld it when it stopped working.'

Nate braked suddenly to a stop.

…

'Chloe, why are we in Iraq?'

'We're gonna beat Nate and Elena to the gardens and rub it in their faces,' Chloe explained as if this was the most simple concept ever.

Ted sighed and scrubbed a hand down his tired face. While he knew that this was going to happen it still annoyed him a little that Chloe really felt that the deception was necessary.

'Why did you have to lie?' he asked.

Chloe continued lowering the ramp of their small cargo plane. A compact Jeep was in the hold with the rest of their luggage. Over the noise, Chloe must not have heard because she didn't answer.

With a harsh scrape the ramp made contact with the Iraqi soil.

Dry desert air filled the cramped space.

There was quiet and Chloe dumped their stuff into the boot of the Jeep. Before she could get into the vehicle Ted closed in on her. Almost pinning her to the car door, he caught Chloe by surprise.

His hair ruffled and his expression a little pissed off, Chloe wondered where this was going. They were either going to add a compact Jeep in a cargo plane in Iraq to the list of places they had slept together or get into a major row. Chloe wasn't sure if it was a good thing that she enjoyed both.

'Why did you lie?' Ted repeated.

Ah, Chloe thought, a row it is then.

'It seemed like a good idea at the time,' she said.

'Why?' Ted was too exasperated to be truly angry, 'If you'd told me you wanted to go on an adventure I would have said yes. You know that. Why do you insist on the games?'

Chloe internally squirmed. He had a point. He always had a point. Possibly, just possibly, she sometimes got a case of intense tunnel-vision. And perhaps she sometimes forgot that Ted didn't want to shackle her to the family idyll she so despised.

'Urgh,' she began her argument less than articulately, 'I'm sorry. I didn't think you'd agree because I know you want to settle down, have kids, turn into trees, that kind of thing. We've been pretty boring these past few months I was worried you'd gotten used to it.'

Ted slammed his palms against the Jeep and let out a grunt. 'Chloe, we've been over this. I don't want to turn into a tree.'

'But you don't deny the settling down thing,' Chloe said with a triumphant gleam in her eye.

Ted dropped his head and mentally counted to ten.

'Look, I love you. You know that. I'd never force you into something you don't want. I don't even know what I want; all I have figured out is that you're a part of it. I don't see visions of our hordes of children and our white picket fence. There's just you and that's enough. Also, I don't like being boring either. If you remember, I used to be a mercenary. I used to eat firefights for breakfast. I once stitched a gunshot wound in your leg and I'm not even a medically trained professional.'

'Yes,' Chloe mused with a hint of a smile, 'Heady days. But that was a while ago.'

Ted looked up again and couldn't resist a grin when their eyes met.

'I miss the adventures too. Don't forget that,' he said.

'I won't,' Chloe promised.

'Good. Also, please stop attacking me when we see children,' Ted said.

Chloe snorted. 'I'll try.'

There was a quiet moment.

'That was a really crap row. We're usually better than that,' Chloe muttered.

'Yeah, but I didn't really want to fight. I wanted to do that other thing we do when we get all angry at each other,' Ted said.

'We don't have time for that,' Chloe huffed.

Ted gave her a look.

'Ok, we _might_ have time for that.'

…

The engine plinked gently in the arid heat.

Nate turned slowly to Elena.

'You what?'

Elena figured he had the right to sound so very incredulous but something in her bit back. Well, it wasn't like she had any other choice. Nate was completely useless around the house. Was it too much to ask for a little help around the place? She had a job and still managed to do her fair share of the housework.

'I had sex with you so you would do jobs around the house,' Elena said simply.

Nate turned back to the windscreen and gazed out over the surrounding desert.

'All, this time…all this time I thought _I_ was doing something wrong,' he said quietly as if he was talking to himself.

'Hey, let's not get into right or wrong here,' Elena replied and mentally added that he _had_ done something wrong – his whole attitude to chores had brought this on himself.

Nate shot her a look, 'I'm pretty sure manipulating people with sex is wrong.'

'That's not the point,' Elena said.

'How is that not the point? Of course it's the point!' Nate replied, voice rising in heat and volume.

'Nuh-uh. The point is I had to resort to those kinds of measures just to get you to clean the gutters. Why the heck won't you just do it when I ask normally?' Elena returned, almost at a snarl. It felt oddly satisfying to vent the frustration that had slowly built up.

Nate made a feeble attempt to defend himself from this onslaught but Elena cut him off.

'Don't even try to deny it, mister. You don't do anything unless it effects Alex in some way, then you're all over it but the minute I ask you to take the trash out, fix the fence, rake the leaves it's a quick pit-stop in the bedroom. And don't even let me get started on the habits. Would it kill you to learn what can go in the dryer and what can't? And when you hoover the floor…fucking hoover the floor, don't just do the bits that are easy to get to. Also, don't leave the greasy burnt pans to solidify for two days before cleaning it…soak the damn thing first - .'

Nate sat in stunned silence. His expression was akin to one who had been forcefully slapped. Twice.

'Hey, give me some credit,' he managed shakily, 'it's got that non-stick layer thing so it doesn't matter…'

'Did. Nate. Did. It _did_ have a non-stick layer till you chipped the damn thing off while trying to clean said pans,' Elena said. She was on a roll now. Yes, she sounded incredibly hormonal and whiny but nothing would change if she didn't say anything out loud. So many times she had gritted her teeth, cursed quietly and bottled up her annoyance.

Nate went quiet again. He wasn't sure whether to be angry or apologetic. Judging by Elena's outburst it would have to be the latter. Maybe he had been a bit lazy…

In a moment of clarity though, Nate realised one thing that did make him feel a lot better.

'Thank God,' he muttered.

'What?' Elena narrowed her eyes, misinterpreting his remark for a 'Thank God – she's finally shut the hell up, the crazy bitch'.

'I was just thinking,' Nate explained, 'that at least I know what the problem is now. It's something I can fix easily. I can't do anything about going bald or you suddenly liking women.'

Elena snorted at the thought of chrome-dome Nate, 'What are you talking about? You're not going bald. I also don't care if you do go bald. And why would I start liking women? Do I even want to know how you came to these conclusions?'

Nate let his head fall back onto the car seat and then frowned, 'Wait, you judge me for my dodgy logic but doesn't withholding sex bother you too?'

'Yes, but I was so stubborn it didn't matter. I was punishing you and it seemed to be working. That was good enough for me,' Elena said with a shrug.

'Now _that_ doesn't make sense,' Nate said.

'It's a woman thing,' Elena said as a way of explanation.

'Has to be,' Nate grumbled, 'Because it's crazy.'

The two sat in silence for a few moments, slowly baking in the heat.

'Are we good?' Elena asked quietly after a few minutes.

'Yeah, we're good,' Nate replied, 'but you owe me, big time.'

Elena turned to him, 'What? You've been a lousy husband for months…surely that cancels all this out?'

'It doesn't because withholding sexy times is pretty mean and underhanded. You coulda' just told me what was up,' Nate replied.

Elena seriously doubted whether that method would have worked but had to partly agree. Her attitude hadn't exactly helped their current marital situation.

'Ok, fine,' she acquiesced, 'I owe you but you better start doing stuff around the house.'

Nate's gleeful look worried Elena greatly.

The Jeep started up again and soon they were speeding away towards the looming mountains.

…

Once a compact Jeep in a cargo plane in Iraq had well and truly been added to the list, Chloe and Ted were on their way, racing towards the same peaks that Elena and Nate were.

'So do we have any background information on this little excursion? Any nasty booby-traps or supernatural oddities I need to know about?' Ted asked as he spread a map over the dashboard while Chloe drove.

'Sully said there wasn't anything to worry about. In all honesty I don't think the Gardens will be anything more than a glorified cave with some ancient flower pots,' Chloe explained.

'Care to enlighten me on what's so thrilling about this trip, then?' Ted joked.

'Well, we're in a pretty dangerous country. And when we expect things to go well…they never do…I'm banking on that,' Chloe replied.

'Of course you were,' Ted said to himself out loud and Chloe shot him a look.

'I've got a few guns if we need them,' Chloe added.

'Of course you have,' Ted said, still peering at the map.

Chloe groaned.

'You still haven't forgiven me, have you?' she said, 'After all we did in the Jeep in the cargo plane. The suspension on this thing is shot to pieces.'

Ted grinned, 'I have, don't worry. It's nice to tease though.'

'Arse,' Chloe grumbled in response.

Ted winked at her and then returned to frowning at the map.

'What the heck am I supposed to be looking for?' Ted muttered.

Chloe stabbed at the map randomly without taking her eyes from the road.

'There, right at that border with Iran. In the mountains,' she explained.

'That is literally all this map is showing. Anything else?' Ted asked.

'Uh, yeah, read this thing, Sully gave it,' Chloe fished out a piece of paper from her pocket and handed it to Ted. He scanned it quickly.

'So the Gardens are meant to be hidden in some mountains, in some kind of hidden valley thing,' Ted said.

'Yep. Apparently they were built for the wife of Nebuchadnezzar around 600BC. So far no evidence of the gardens exists in what used to be Babylon but Sully's contact thinks they're looking in the wrong place.'

'Go figure,' Ted said in a deadpan tone, 'the Hanging Gardens of Babylon are not in Babylon. Makes perfect sense.'

Chloe gave him a dirty look, 'All right, no need to get catty. Well, anyways, Sully's contact says there's a strange spike in the number of plant species around this one area of the Iraqi mountains. For some reason in the surrounding area there are the usual shrubs and whatnot but one area, this one here,' at this point Chloe finally prodded the right bit of the map, 'there's a sudden increase in the number of species. The plants all get rather tropical from what I can gather. Some of them can only be found in this one area and are even referenced in ancient texts.'

'I see,' Ted mused. He was still rather sceptical.

Chloe sighed, she could sense Ted's reluctance to believe but she had a gut feeling. Sully's contact was on to something. There was also the added bonus that Nate was also following this hunch. That man had a nose for sensing out a real quest.

Ted sat back in his seat and watched the countryside blur past.

Despite what Chloe may have thought, he was genuinely excited about this trip. It had been a while since something had brought them together like this.

Danger was to be expected and while Ted was prepared for it he found himself hoping that there wasn't going to be much of it.

Nate and Elena were parents.

Chloe and him were…well they were together and that was what mattered.

They couldn't afford to take chances. They had responsibilities, things bigger than themselves to protect.

Ted wondered if he was the only one thinking these things.

It turned out that he wasn't.

'I've been talking about this whole trip as if it's nothing,' Chloe said quietly, 'but I want you to know that I have thought about this and I'm not running into this willy-nilly or anything like that. We've established that neither one of us wants to be trees but I do want to make it to that age. I want to see you grow old and all that crap. I know we're not invincible.'

Ted was quiet for a very long time.

'Willy-nilly?' he said finally.

Chloe rolled her eyes.

…

Having ditched the Jeep a while ago when they finally reached the mountain they were looking for, Nate and Elena hiked steadily up the slopes.

'I'm kinda surprised at the all the wildlife here,' Elena said after a while. For some reason this mountain was a lot greener than the surrounding ones.

'Yeah, Sully mentioned something about that but I kinda zoned out,' Nate replied.

'You? Zone out of possible information leading to the famed Gardens of Babylon? That's impossible,' Elena joked.

'Well, to be honest, I heard the word Iraq and then thought about going on a trip with you and then I was thinking about how weird our marriage had got,' Nate explained truthfully.

'Ok, ok, before I start feeling guilty again, what else did Sully say? We found the mountain but did he say anything about an entrance?'

Nate rooted around in his rucksack till he found a piece of paper containing the details Sully had given him. He frowned.

'Uh, no is the answer to your question. Sully's contact only pinpointed the right mountain,' he said.

Elena sighed in frustration and kicked a rock down the mountain.

Without warning the ground they were standing on began to sink.

'What the -.'

Nate didn't even get to finish his sentence because the very rocks they were standing on were now falling, rolling away down a sharp incline that led towards the inside of the mountain.

In a few short seconds both Nate and Elena were joining those rocks. The two of them half tumbled half slid down the rocky chute with bone jarring thuds and numerous scrapes.

On their way down, Elena caught herself thinking that this was all a bit much for kicking one rock.

And when they finally stopped rolling, Nate managed to recover first and noticed a thin beam of light illuminating a small raised platform, right in the centre of the cavern they had fallen into.

What was being revealed on this platform was most unexpected.

…

Chloe braked to a halt alongside and Nate and Elena's Jeep.

'Engine's cool,' Ted said, testing the metal with a palm.

'They can't be too far ahead,' Chloe muttered, 'We can catch up with them.'

Ted eyed the mountains, 'I don't know, there isn't exactly a neon sign telling us where to look. The entrance could be anywhere. Sully's contact wasn't very helpful on that.'

Before Chloe could reply there was a sudden rumble. High up above them a cloud of dust pouffed outwards as a part of the mountain seemed to crumble in on itself. An opening appeared as the mountainside swallowed loose rubble greedily.

Eventually the rumbling subsided and the only noise that could be heard were the final few rocks lazily tumbling down the slope.

Ted and Chloe looked at each other.

'It's not a neon sign,' Chloe said slowly, 'But it's pretty damn close.'

They scrambled towards the opening.

…

'What the heck is that?' Elena said with utter disbelief. She knew what it was but her brain couldn't quite comprehend what it was seeing. Maybe she had hit her head on something. Maybe she was hallucinating.

Nate strode up to the object, 'It's…it's a bed.'

Elena struggled after him, 'What the…an actual bed?'

Nate sat down on the oddly located item of furniture, 'Wow, this isn't any old Ikea thing; it's a solid wood four-poster.'

Elena touched one of the posts. It didn't seem ancient and it had an almost suspicious lack of dust on it.

'Y'know how you said this place was deserted?' Elena said slowly.

'Yeah,' Nate said, testing the bounce on the mattress.

'I think someone has been here, recently.'

'No way. We're the only people here. If anyone else had been here they would have set off that ridiculous rock slide that we just survived,' Nate assured her.

Elena had to admit that he did have a point, but it was still worrying.

'Y'know how I said you owed me,' Nate said with a gleam in his eye.

'Yeah,' Elena replied slowly. She had a horrible feeling she knew where this conversation was going.

'I want to cash it. In full. Right now.'

'You're kidding, right? Here?' Elena was mortified.

Nate looked around and then at the bed, 'It's a sign. The powers that be want this to happen. Why else would there be a four poster bed in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon?'

Elena was pretty sure it wasn't so they could have make-up sex on it.

She was right

* * *

**Thanks for reading…**

**I realised this went on too long but couldn't find a good place to stop so I just made the end sections really small lol**

**Don't even ask how Chloe and Ted caught up with Nate…they just did…**

**In this little story I've realised the characters aren't really the same as in the previous one…they've changed a bit…sorry about that…**

**Ted seems a bit immature here…he's usually the mature one lol**

**I've made up all the Hanging Gardens of Babylon plant life stuff…it is true though that there is no evidence of it…some people think it was probably just a legend….**

**In this chapter it looks like I'm obsessed with trees…I'm not…honest…**

**You could probably tell that Elena's rant was possibly based on some kind of truth lol **

**I hope the new Uncharted game is good…if there are any British bad guys, I'm not going to be happy…there's been one in every game so far…Roman, Flynn, Marlow and her motley crew of bald, leather-jacketed pub brawlers…they probably have bad teeth too…the level of stereotyping is too damn high as some would say lol**


	3. Chapter 3

**Sorry for the delay...**

**If there is one thing I've learnt since getting a job is to appreciate the four day working week...thank you Easter for the many public holidays you bring**

**This chapter is pretty short compared to what I normally write... **

**Thanks for reading this**

**In the last chapter Elena and Nate found a bed in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon…as you do…**

* * *

Extra Chapter

Part 3

'We broke it,' Elena said in amazement.

'Huh?' Nate mumbled.

'We broke. The bed,' Elena reiterated slowly.

'Awesome,' Nate replied muzzily. There was a stupid grin plastered across his face.

'This is not awesome,' Elena replied quickly, jumping off and finding her scattered clothes. Yes, the sex was mind-blowingly good and incredibly overdue but Elena could help but feel ashamed. They had probably just broken a priceless ancient artefact…all because they just couldn't keep it in their pants. What if someone found out? Elena was pretty sure she'd be the first ever victim of death due to blunt force embarrassment.

How had it even happened?

Elena remembered refusing adamantly to have biblical relations on the strange bed and now here they were: splintered wood and satisfaction. What had gone wrong?

It probably had something to do with the way Nate had come over when he saw her stubborn expression.

Nate hadn't cared that the gods probably hadn't put the bed there for them. Here they were, finally with the solitude that they had been craving. What better time than now to break the dry spell that may or may not have been caused by him?

He had closed the gap between Elena and him.

Oh yes, Elena thought, now she remembered.

Nate had closed the gap, wasted no time and kissed her. It was a hot and bothered kind of kiss. There was passion and longing but there was also equal doses of dust, sweat and pain.

They had both been craving this but they had also just fallen into a mountain. Elena was pretty sure she'd sprained an ankle and twisted an elbow. God knew what was wrong with Nate, there was blood running down the side of his head freely but they continued anyway with the energy and foolishness of people ten years younger.

When Nate's hand had managed to get up her shirt – Elena was surprised at how quickly that had come about, she could have sworn she was wearing a belt and three layers of tucked in tops ˗˗ all those bruises seemed immaterial. His hands felt rough against smooth skin.

How could she have refused this?

You'd have to be clinically insane.

Elena felt Nate's lips on her neck and she let out a soft, 'Ermahgerd.'

Nate hadn't heard but Elena's inner, more sensible, mind frowned. She definitely had to stop looking up internet memes in her spare time.

The two tripped and staggered their way over to the bed and lost a few clothes in the process.

It didn't take long for Elena to notice certain hardness that had nothing to do with the gun that Nate had shoved in his jeans because that was on the floor.

And then, after a while, with a few more internal 'Ermahgerds' the bed broke.

Elena snapped out of her reverie as Nate finally managed to extract himself from the wreckage causing a spring to rip free of the mangled mattress.

Dear lord, Elena thought to herself. She made a mental note to never again go without sex for this long again. No furniture would be safe otherwise.

'Let's explore,' Nate said, having re-dressed at light speed.

Elena still felt a little slack-jawed about the bed thing.

'Wait, shouldn't we discuss what happened?' she said, motioning to broken bed.

Nate gave her a look, 'What do you want me to say?'

Elena had to admit there wasn't much that could be said. It was pretty self-explanatory. Maybe they should leave some money.

Nate wandered over to Elena.

'It'll be fine,' he said, 'No one's gonna care that we broke a bed and if anyone finds it they're not gonna know how it broke. I'm telling you…no one is gonna' care. No one.'

Not for the first time in his life, Nate was wrong.

Very wrong.

…

The internationally wanted terrorist Muhammad Abu Safir didn't care much for history. So when he unwittingly stumbled across a secret cave, untouched for thousands of years in the Iraqi mountains, he hadn't exactly been thinking that he had uncovered the entrance to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon: the only wonder of the ancient world whose existence was still hotly debated.

It was the find of the century but Safir couldn't care less. He had found the perfect hiding place. The Western forces would never be able to find him.

On top of this an abandoned village had provided him with, most fortuitously, a bed.

One day, scouting for some provisions in an abandoned settlement not too far from the caves, Safir had spotted a beautiful four poster bed that, unlike anything else in the rest of the village, was actually in good condition. It even had a sprung mattress. As soon as he had clapped eyes on the exquisite and entirely out place piece of furniture he knew he had to have it.

It took three days of furtive ventures into the night to drag his beloved bed to the mountains. But it was worth it. Oh yes. Such nights of comfort he had experienced while he plotted his next dastardly move against the West.

However, this day there was something different. Something wrong.

Upon returning from his trip recruiting that had taken a few days, Safir noticed the signs immediately. His little traps, left so he'd know if people had been here while he was away, had all been set off. A misplaced rock here and some foliage trampled over there. There was also the give-away mini landslide that was piled up.

Scampering forward and into the cave proper, Safir gasped.

Upon the small dais where he had spent many a comfortable night was the bed.

It was broken in two. A solitary quivering spring stuck out of the now misshapen mattress.

Safir howled.

…

'This doesn't look safe,' Ted muttered as he peered down into the inky darkness of the mountain's newest opening.

'When has that ever stopped us?' Chloe replied and took a tentative step onto the loose rocks. She was half tempted to sit on her backpack and slide all the way down.

Ted threw a fizzing flare into the chute.

The two watched it bounce haphazardly around until it finally came to a stop, looking like not much more than a lit match.

Before Ted could comment an echoing bellow pierced the quiet.

In a rare moment of mental harmony, in which Chloe and Ted almost had a telepathic conversation in which they expressed a faint sense of dread at the noise and decided that Nate and Elena needed their help ultra-quick, rock slide be damned, they both scrambled down the steep slope.

They had no idea what they were heading towards but they both knew one thing.

It wasn't going to be good.

…

'Did you hear that?' Elena frowned at back at where they had come from.

Once they had put the broken bed behind them, both Nate and Elena began to take stock of their surroundings.

Behind them was the entrance they had created. The cave-in had led them to a large cavern. There was very little light to speak of except for the single shaft of light that had illuminated the platform with the bed.

The space around Nate and Elena was too vast to even make out its boundaries but wasn't very steep. While the surfaces were rough and uneven, they couldn't help but feel the cave was man-made.

The two had decided to investigate further. Having got out the flashlights, Nate and Elena separated, each wandering off to look for any clues that might tell them what the heck was going on.

Nate hadn't been able to find anything other than rubble where he was searching but Elena had stumbled across the entrance of a roughly hewn corridor. The two had been proceeding down this winding path for a while when they heard the cry.

'Yeah, sounded like someone shouting,' Nate replied, pointing his torch back down from where they had come from.

The beam revealed nothing, but Elena could feel the hairs on her neck prickle. There had been an anguished quality to the scream.

What could possibly make someone feel like that?

Elena instantly thought of the broken bed. Oh god…the owner had found it, hadn't they?

It was some sort of priceless heirloom, wasn't it?

Before Elena could dwell any further on this illogical train of thought Nate grabbed her hand.

'I think we should keep going,' he said quietly. He had thought the sound was more inhuman rather than anything else and that worried him.

Inhuman generally meant hard to kill. That wasn't something he was really looking forward to and a small part of Nate was surprised at this. He relished a good fight but preferred it when things were even and at this moment in time he couldn't think of wanting to do anything more than put as much distance between him and whatever had made that sound.

Without knowing how, Nate's thoughts turned to Alex. His son. The tiny human which his life revolved around. Before in times like this, his mind wouldn't really flash to anything that would cause hesitation or fear – there hadn't been any reason for it to but now, now was different.

For the first time in a very, very long time, Nate felt afraid. It was a horrible feeling – cloying and suffocating. For some reason he desperately wanted to hold his boy. Hold him close. What Nate did now determined whether he would see his only child again. He had to make the smart choice, the safe choice, the boring choice.

In a short while, Nate had actually fallen behind and it was Elena pulling him forward.

'Come on,' she urged.

Nate came back to his senses and the two hurried along the rocky corridor.

What had just gotten into him? One otherworldly scream and he was pissing himself? Nate internally shuddered. He was better than this.

If he wanted to see his son again, he'd have to be.

…

Safir took a long slow breath. People had been here. They'd broken his bed.

Someone was going to have to pay.

It was only then Safir noticed the spluttering flare at the base of the rock mound. The red smoky glow it emitted cast an eerie light.

A flare?

These people were well equipped.

The West?

Safir tapped his chin thoughtfully. It had to be, he reasoned. Who else was despicable enough to destroy a man's bed like this? It was senseless. There was no need.

Before his thoughts could go on any further, he heard a scrabbling sound. More people. Coming down the slope.

Safir slunk away into the darkness and hid.

It was time to see who he was facing.

…

Chloe stood, hands on hips, staring at the wreckage before her.

'Is that a bed?' Ted asked.

'It used to be,' Chloe muttered, prodding the pile with the toe of her boot.

'Do you think Elena and Nate did that?'

There was silence for a moment.

'I don't know,' Chloe began slowly, 'I can't see them lugging this thing here so it must have been there before.'

Ted agreed, 'Do you think it was Sully? Taking his plan a little too far?'

'Not sure,' Chloe said, 'I don't think he was actually expecting them to have sex here. I think he thought it would just follow naturally after they had fun on this adventure.'

Again, Ted had to agree, 'So they happened to find a bed and then…broke it...and then left. Where did they go? Who screamed?'

Chloe looked around, probing the darkness with a torch.

'I don't think it was Elena or Nate who screamed,' she muttered, 'maybe the person whose bed this is found it, got angry, thought 'sod it' and screamed their head off in a crazy rage.'

Ted raised an eyebrow at her, 'I think they probably saw the flare and panicked.'

Chloe shrugged, but withdrew her pistol from the waistband of her trousers.

'Whatever happened, something isn't right,' she said.

'Let's search this cave and find Nate and Elena, maybe they can shed some light on the situation,' Ted suggested.

Chloe nodded.

…

Safir prowled around trying to get a better angle on the two people who had entered the cavern.

They had stopped by the remains of his bed.

There was a woman and a man. The woman kicked his bed.

Safir bit back a whimper.

They were going to die. He would make sure of that.

He edged closer, trying to hear what they were saying. With his broken understanding of English, Safir managed to get that there were two other people who had found his hideout.

The worse thing though was that Safir thought he heard how they had broken the bed.

Now that really took the biscuit.

Safir watched the two westerners move away from the centre of the cave. Slinking back into the shadows, Safir pulled out a black box.

It was simple in design: there was one dial and a boxy flap on one side.

Safir twisted the dial one notch and the boxy flap clicked open to reveal a switch.

It was time for the fun to begin.

…

'It's a fucking dead end,' Nate breathed. He was still angry at himself for his earlier thoughts.

Elena stared up at the mass of rock that was blocking their way.

'There must have been some sort of cave in,' she murmured, 'We have to turn back. Maybe we missed something in the first chamber.'

Nate grunted.

It was only then, once they had both come to a standstill, that Elena noticed Nate's expression. He looked bemused.

'Are you ok?' she asked.

'Fine,' Nate replied shortly without meeting her gaze.

Elena was a little miffed. If they had to turn back towards the source of the scream, she'd rather face whatever it was while Nate was being objective and not a moody cow.

'Hey, look at me at least when you're lying,' she said to him.

Nate looked at her and Elena was taken aback to see a flash of fear in Nate's eyes and not anger. He was afraid? Elena sighed inwardly.

The one emotion that Nate could never handle well. Fear. According to him it was not okay to be scared. It was a weakness. The worst possible one.

'Nate.'

Nate's shoulders dropped a little. He knew he wasn't going to get out of here till he explained himself. How could Elena read him so well? It was unfair.

He shoved a hand through his hair.

'I got scared, back there. I dunno what happened but I suddenly started thinking about Alex and well…shit…I wanted this to be a fun little getaway…and yeah…I was hoping that there would be some danger and now that it looks like there is some I'm regretting it. I've become a coward. I hate it.'

Elena was quiet. In all honesty, she hadn't expected such a detailed explanation.

She framed his face in her hands.

'I have a few things to say,' she began, 'don't be so dramatic. Fearing that you may not see your son again does not make you a weaker man. Also, I agreed to come on this trip and hoped something interesting would happen too. And if it turns out there is some kind of danger, I will be terrified, but we will get through it, together, because we love our son enough to do whatever the fuck we can to stay alive.'

Nate leant a dusty forehead against Elena's.

'What is wrong with me?' he muttered.

'You're a dad and a good one,' Elena murmured.

They stood there in darkness, an amiable silence surrounding them. The brief respite couldn't last forever though and after a few moments they broke apart.

'Next time I decide to do something like this, kick me,' Nate said grimly. He took a pistol from the rucksack and handed it to Elena, who flicked the safety off.

'Don't worry,' she replied, 'I will.'

The two headed back with grim determination.

…

'There's nothing here,' Chloe grumbled.

'There's a tunnel over there,' Ted called out from behind the wrecked bed and Chloe abandoned her search and hurried over.

They both hunched down to peer into it. The opening was neither tall nor wide and even Chloe would have had to hunker down to crawl through it.

'It's not that big,' Chloe said, 'I can't see Nate and Elena going down there.'

Ted shone the torch around the space surrounding the tunnel.

'Hey, there's some plywood here,' he said, 'this probably isn't from the Gardens.'

'I think someone used it to cover this tunnel,' Chloe said. An image was beginning to form in her mind about what was going on. Before it could develop any further though there was a slight scuffle.

In the pressing silence of the gloom it was extremely noticeable, even more so because it was coming from the other side of the cavern.

Both Chloe and Ted pivoted as one, guns outstretched.

'What was that?' Chloe whispered.

Ted squinted into the darkness. He thought the saw a flickering light but couldn't be sure. The flashlights revealed nothing but cave.

Chloe inched forward towards the one part of the cavern she hadn't yet seen to.

Ted followed closely behind.

As they crept forwards the rocky walls of the cave slowly materialised.

''_There's nothing here_'?' Ted said in a mocking tone as they both saw a carved man-sized corridor before them.

'Shut up,' Chloe hissed, 'I didn't get to that part because you said you'd found something.'

Ted was about to reply when there was a hysterical giggle.

Chloe waited a beat. 'Ted, was that you?'

'No.'

'Ok. I think that boulder just giggled then,' Chloe said in a dead serious tone.

'That's a sentence I don't hear often,' Ted muttered and aimed his gun and torch at the offending chunk of rock. He jerked his head at Chloe, motioning for her to circle the boulder in the opposite direction that he was.

The beams of their torches had nearly met when something sprang up from the remaining shadow, cackling with mad delight.

Startled, Chloe and Ted both wavered for a moment. It was long enough.

A scrawny man with crazy eyes capered before them and began to run towards the corridor. He was waving a small black box around.

Regaining his composure, Ted trained his sights on the man but it was too late.

The man jabbed something on the box.

For a moment nothing happened. The man stopped running and turned back towards Chloe and Ted, grinning manically.

While this unnerved Chloe, Ted was rather relieved that the black box hadn't been for a bomb-jacket or any kind of explosive for that matter.

Then there was a dull whump.

Dust showered down from above.

The corridor began to glow a fiery red. Scorching heat radiated outwards.

Ted realised with a sick feeling that somewhere a bomb _had_ been set off and now all the energy was being funnelled their way. He hoped to God that Nate and Elena weren't in there somewhere.

Chloe grabbed Ted's arm and dragged him back.

The ground rumbled as an inferno of compressed flame erupted from the mouth of the corridor.

Ted and Chloe were flung back, arms and legs akimbo.

By the time they recovered the man was nowhere to be seen.

…

'Did you hear that?' Elena breathed, noticing a sudden dryness to the air.

'Yeah, it sounded a bit…farty,' Nate replied. They could see the end of the corridor now and had slowed down on seeing that there were other flashlights on in the cavern. They had company.

Elena rolled her eyes. While she may have passed wind at some point in the corridor, she knew it wasn't with enough bass to make the ground tremble.

This was something serious.

Elena turned around and immediately wished she hadn't.

'Uh, Nate?' she asked quickly hastening their pace.

'Yeah?'

'There might be a wall of fiery death coming towards us at a ridiculous speed.'

'Oh,' Nate said inadequately.

There was a moment's hesitation as this sunk in and then instincts kicked in with a fair amount of much needed adrenaline.

Elena and Nate ran as fast as their battered limbs would take them.

It was enough but only just.

* * *

**See? Very short lol**

**Sorry for any mistakes, I didn't spend much time proof reading this...**

**I'd be angry if someone broke a comfortable bed…crime against humanity…for sure lol…the whole bed thing was dipping into the silliness that ran rampant in the other story…sorry...I couldn't help it...  
**

**Internet memes are addictive…I couldn't take the scene where Nate and Elena broke the bed seriously so I had to make it ridiculous…sorry...**

**If you don't know this particular meme, just type ermahgerd into Google…it's great…**

**I recently finished playing Tomb Raider and the sheer craziness of the running and jumping skills reminded me alot of Uncharted...Lara should have died so many times in that game...so many times...lol**

**Thanks again for reading**


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